Ive got a cheap, old, frankenstein sort of machine that i use for games, mostly oblivion, and i want to give it some upgrades to play oblivion at higher settings.
Frankenstein machine:
Started as an Emachines, then upgraded via a newegg deal with a geforce 6200, ASUS A8R-MX mobo, amd athlon 64 3400+, and an extra 512mb 400mhz ram. The new mobo was never an official release(my first impression of ASUS...) and has almost no online info or support from ASUS. Therefore ill list its important specs for you...
1 pci ex x16
4 ddr 184pin 400mhz slots(max 4 gigs)
1Ghz fsb
northbridge:ATI RS482(A12)
southbridge:ULI M1573
AMD 939 processor slot
I was planning on getting new ram to have either 2gb or 4gb. I was thinking 2gb would work best since most of the games i play dont really need too much ram and im running xp. I was also thinking of finding a 64 x2 processor to go dual core, but id have to find it on some auction site and just hope it would actually work. The prob is the video card. I dont want to buy a video card thinking it would help a bunch, but have it be completely bottlenecked. I was thinking about the geforce 8000 series, or maybe something in the radeon 2000 series. but w/e it is, it should be pci ex x16, not 2.0x16. After that ill have to upgrade the pcu obviously, and i need cheap ideas to keep the case cool. Being an emachines case, it cools poorly, so either i need to drill it and add fans or go with a cheep water cooler. The idea for just upgrading this thing is that in a year im off to college. Good news is that it only has to last a year, after that im off to college. After college ill build a good machine, but for now it would make no sense to do that. So any ideas or suggestions you could give would be great!
Frankenstein machine:
Started as an Emachines, then upgraded via a newegg deal with a geforce 6200, ASUS A8R-MX mobo, amd athlon 64 3400+, and an extra 512mb 400mhz ram. The new mobo was never an official release(my first impression of ASUS...) and has almost no online info or support from ASUS. Therefore ill list its important specs for you...
1 pci ex x16
4 ddr 184pin 400mhz slots(max 4 gigs)
1Ghz fsb
northbridge:ATI RS482(A12)
southbridge:ULI M1573
AMD 939 processor slot
I was planning on getting new ram to have either 2gb or 4gb. I was thinking 2gb would work best since most of the games i play dont really need too much ram and im running xp. I was also thinking of finding a 64 x2 processor to go dual core, but id have to find it on some auction site and just hope it would actually work. The prob is the video card. I dont want to buy a video card thinking it would help a bunch, but have it be completely bottlenecked. I was thinking about the geforce 8000 series, or maybe something in the radeon 2000 series. but w/e it is, it should be pci ex x16, not 2.0x16. After that ill have to upgrade the pcu obviously, and i need cheap ideas to keep the case cool. Being an emachines case, it cools poorly, so either i need to drill it and add fans or go with a cheep water cooler. The idea for just upgrading this thing is that in a year im off to college. Good news is that it only has to last a year, after that im off to college. After college ill build a good machine, but for now it would make no sense to do that. So any ideas or suggestions you could give would be great!